Flat Water Foiling Silent Trend

When we think foiling, we think, Wing Foiling, SUP Foiling, Downwind Foiling, Foil Surfing but rarely Flat Water Pump Foiling. Far away from the epic downwind runs and foil surf spots of this world a silent trend is unfolding: Flat Water Pump Foiling. Devon Mantz the “Wake thief” (youtube channel here) is the most prominent figure of this “movement”, but there are many more who are following this trend all over the world. Some of them are in the heart of Europe, where the weather gets grey an cold half of the time of the year, and nothing is stopping them from exercising their passion of foiling. Just like SUP, you can foil pump foil in any kind of water. The amount of people mastering the dock start as grown exponentially in the last few years and will continue to do so.

We now see people taking lessons in flat water pumping and manufacturers are producing foils just for this kind of discipline. Distance records are being broken and the gear is getting better and better. Are we soon at a tipping point where we have enough people being passionate about flat water foiling that we are going to have competitions? Will we see wing foiling events adding pump races on days when there is no wind? Could we even imagine having specialty starting blocks for foil pumpers?

There are still many questions open and time will tell how far this will go.

Frank Sorge is a German who is on the forefront of the foil pumping trend in central Europa and has come up with a dock start that allows him to start off 90 degrees from the land. This will open up more spots for land starts with a foil.